Email Marketing Essentials: List and Content
At one point or another we have all thought to ourselves “If wish I could get more of my potential customers engaged with my business without forking over thousands of dollars to a big marketing agency.” Well I have some good news for you, with a well crafted email marketing campaign you can start getting the customer engagement that you have always wanted without spending thousands of dollars to do it.
Email marketing has been an important marketing tool in business for many years and it is not getting any less useful. Email marketing has a plethora of important uses, from keeping potential customers engaged in your business or getting current prospects to start working through your sales funnel, ultimately leading to a sale. There is however, a right and wrong way to do it.
The first thing that you need to do when starting an email marketing campaign is to make sure that you have a list. Not only do you need a list, but that list has to be comprised of people who have explicitly told you that they want to receive your emails. The days of buying a list with 10,000 emails in it are long gone due to the CAN-SPAM Act which significantly limits the types of emails you can send and who you can send them too.
There are quite a few ways that you can build a list of good prospects that don’t include doing anything illegal. A few examples would be:
Providing a signup form on every page of your website (possibly in the footer).
You can also collect emails in person from networking events, business functions etc. but make sure to ask if you can add them to your email list. If you get one of their business cards, you can quickly jot a note on the back to remind yourself if they agreed to be on your email list or not.
All of your printed materials should describe a way to sign up for your email list.
Once you have a list started, you can start crafting your first email campaigns. The old saying, Content is King has never more true. The emails that you will want to send out should not be limited to promotions and offers. You will want to give valuable information on a consistent basis because many of your subscribers will not be ready to make a purchase at this point.
Other ideas that you can use for content can include tips & advice that relate back to your field as well as instructions and directions on how to do things most people might find daunting. Entertaining content such as humor, engaging stories etc. can also be very valuable if used correctly. When you are using entertaining content make sure it has something to do with using or purchasing your product/service otherwise people will have a hard time recalling your brand as the source of the content.
There is much more that goes into a successful Email marketing campaign but these are the essentials to get you started. If you have any questions or would like to learn more feel free to shoot me an email.